Threnody for Aurora
by astreamofstars
Summary: Two months in the life of a man in mourning.


He can't get comfortable in a world without Kara in it. It's all jagged edges and wrong angles, muted colours where they should be bright. Piercing him when he least expects it. Giving way in places that should be solid.

* * *

It's the first time he's visited the memorial wall since he lost her in a burst of such horrible beauty.

It always seems so much quieter here, the candles and the hushed voices giving the place a sacred aura. It feels like a temple, not a graveyard. It's not like he's ever cared for religion beyond the occasional traditional rituals and holiday celebrations, but Kara did, and he thinks that in this hallowed place, it's the closest he's ever come to hoping, wishing, believing in something after death.

The photograph's sharp corners jab the soft palm of his hand when he removes it from his pocket. She's never been his, but he can't give her away. He's not ready to share her with the fleet, and the empty space next to Kat's serious face is too small to hold the burning brightness that was Kara Thrace.

* * *

Sam knows how to grieve. He gets drunk, cries, falls, lets everyone know that Kara was his wife, and she's gone, and he's hurting.

Lee's always envied the man his easy love for Kara, now he envies him his easy grief. As the medics come to tend to him, he can't help but feel jealous, not just that Sam had Kara before he lost her, but that he can shout that loss to the stars.

_I loved Kara Thrace_.

It's an echo inside his head, over and over, and he tries to stamp it down, burying it deep, tightening his jaw and helping to lift Sam onto the gurney.

_I loved Kara Thrace_.

* * *

The usual hustle and bustle of the hangar deck seems distant, subdued, as though he's inside a bubble. Tyrol's shouting somewhere in the background, amongst the clangs of metal and the murmur of voices, but all he can hear is Kara.

_I'm not going back out there. I don't trust myself. _

_So trust me. I'll fly your wing._

He can see her, sitting there under her viper, trying to make him listen, trying to tell him what she needed, her eyes full of a desperate need to be believed.

The guilt is a dagger in his side: that he'd trusted his own judgement more than he trusted hers, because in his great wisdom, he'd believed she needed this, needed to know she could do it. Believed he could make sure she came home.

He has no right to grieve. Not when it's his fault she's gone.

* * *

His father grounds him.

He'd laugh at that, at the irony of his father grounding him now when he was never around to ground him as a teenager, but the frustration of not being trusted to do his job, of not being believed, is too much for him to find it amusing.

There's a flicker of understanding there. A moment when he thinks that his father gets it. He just wonders if there will ever come a point at which his father will learn how to care without comparing.

* * *

He and Dee don't talk about it anymore.

They dance slowly around one another, speaking of inconsequential things. What variation of algae is for dinner. Who is flying CAP during midwatch. Where Lee's spare uniform jacket is.

She pretends not to notice the tenseness of his shoulders and the set of his jaw, the crumpled photographs on his desk, the way he stares off into space, the sound of the word _Kara_shattering in his mouth. He pretends not to have a gaping hole in his heart that threatens to crumple in on him at any moment. They pretend to believe in each other's pretences.

They've become good at pretending.

* * *

He stands, stoic, listening to Gaius Baltar babble at his attorney, scribbling on pieces of paper, throwing out soundbites and bemoaning his fate.

The ease at which Baltar professes his pseudo-love for the cylon in the brig sets Lee's teeth on edge.

How easy it is to to say these things you don't mean, and how difficult to find the time to say the things you do. To have the things you mean with all your heart believed.

* * *

The argument with his father comes out of nowhere, except that it doesn't. They never do. There's always been someone between them, Zak at first, then Kara, to stop them from ever understanding each other.

Lee's failed his father's trust, again, and there's never a damn thing he can do about it.

His father weighs and measures Lee's grief, trying to put it in a box marked '_less than mine_'. It's all Lee can do to stay in the room, hold his head up high, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. Even his own father doesn't see the depths of Lee's pain.

Perhaps especially his father.

* * *

The cylon seems so real. Lee will never get over how perfectly human they look, up close. Emotions and pain run across her face, and he could almost believe that it's not just programmed into her to feel that way.

Lampkin's words seemed as designed to hit him hard in the heart as they are to hit the cylon's software, though of course he knows that's not the case. He almost wishes it were, just so that he knew that someone saw him, that someone else recognised his pain so that he would know it were real, that he really did love Kara Thrace. Sometimes it feels so nebulous, as though it only ever took place inside his head.

Maybe it did.

* * *

He needs something to do.

Listening to Lampkin talk has made him sit up, made him listen, and maybe this, _this_ is what he needs. He can't get back out there in his bird, not with every moment of it a reminder of Kara.

His father's shadow is cast so wide that he'll never get out from under it, into the light, unless he makes a run for it. Maybe that's the only way his father will ever see him, really see him, if he pushes himself into the spotlight like this.

Walking out of his father's quarters feels like the bravest thing he's ever done.

* * *

The photograph in his pocket has become too heavy to carry alone, and he can't help but hear Kara's voice, the way she'd be if she knew what he was doing, carrying it around like a godsdamn talisman against ... he doesn't even know. What is he trying to protect himself against when the worst has already happened?

_I ask you to do one frakkin' thing, Lee ..._

The exasperation echoing in his ears almost makes him smile. He misses that, he misses _her_, in every way, and maybe this is one last thing he can do for her.

* * *

It's still quiet and peaceful by the memorial wall. One of the candles has guttered out, and he lights it again, feeling a sense of rightness that he does so before placing Kara's photograph on the wall. Her smiling face stares back at him and for a few moments, he can't take his eyes off her.

The clicking of crutches along the metal floor breaks him from his reverie, and he feels himself tense up a little.

It's strange, but as it turns out, maybe of all the people on this ship, in this fleet, Sam's the only one who comes close to understanding.

* * *

He recognises that smell in her cup. He should. He slept next to the president for days back then, watching what the chamalla did to her, watching how it made her struggle, watching her suffer for what she believed in.

Lee's not sure he believes in anything anymore.

His father has built a brick wall around himself, keeping her tucked inside with him, and it feels so wrong to Lee. He remembers the days when that wall was between them, with himself firmly perched in the middle, wanting to tilt one way, then the other. Now it's there in front of him, and he's not going to pound on it, begging to be let in. It's lonely here outside, but maybe _lonely_ is all he has now.

Without Kara, what else is there anyway?

* * *

Facing the president in court is nervewracking. She looks so different from the woman who first gave him that nickname, back when he believed she had all the answers, back when he believed she knew what was right. She's always looked at him as though she saw right inside him; now she looks at him as though she doesn't like what she sees there.

There's a part of him that wants to apologise for what he's going to do; to make it all right again before he even does it, but the louder part won't let him.

He wonders what Kara would think if she were here watching. Listening to the way he just broke the president's heart.

* * *

He can't take it any more.

There's so much guilt tangled up inside him that it's spilling out all over the courtroom, along with the words that are coming from somewhere so deep inside him that he sits and listens to himself talk, not even knowing what's going to come out next. Justice, mistakes, forgiveness …

He wonders when he forgave Kara.

He wonders if she ever forgave him.

* * *

He must be hallucinating. That's the only explanation. It's stress, or tiredness, or too much time spent in the company of one Gaius Frakking Baltar.

There's no way that Kara Thrace is smiling at him from the cockpit next to his.

No frakking way.

He doesn't really care. A hallucination of Kara is better than no Kara at all, and if she's leading him to his doom, right at this moment, he'd welcome it.

* * *

He can still barely believe she's real, even when she's standing right in front of his eyes.

The smile is the same, the voice, even the scent of her hair. The irritation is no different from any irritation he's ever seen from her, ever had directed at him.

But her bird is pristine and she _died_, she died and he saw her and she can't be real.

He still doesn't care.

* * *

There's a part of him that feels settled, feels right. And he thinks about the frakked up situation he's in and almost laughs. He feels like he knows where he's going for the first time in a long time, and all he needed was Kara's face in his vision and Kara's body in his arms and Kara's lips on his own.

And nothing else matters anymore. Not his father, not the president, not this whole frakked up fleet. Just him, and a living, breathing Kara, and the most important thing he thinks he's ever said to her.

"I believe you." _I love you. I love you. I love you_.


End file.
